Weekend Update
Posted on January 25, 2010 Posted by John Scalzi 30 Comments
I spent my weekend in Michigan, watching this:
That’s my friend Yanni feeding creme brulee to Krissy while both of them are wearing very sexy cocktail dresses. I could watch that all evening long, and did. So there.
We were in Michigan to visit friends, but as it happens most of the friends in Michigan whom we wished to visit were also at the ConFusion science fiction convention, so that’s where we were as well. As noted earlier, I’m mostly taking the year off from actively participating at science fiction conventions, so my “programming” at ConFusion this year largely consisted of parking my ass in the bar and talking my head off with whomever came to sit down. Occasionally I would leave the bar to eat or sleep. Wash, rinse, repeat. Yes, there is an irony to my living in the bar for a weekend, considering I don’t drink at all. But hey, it’s a convention. Sooner or later, everyone walks through the bar.
Anyway, it was a perfectly lovely weekend and a fine excuse to get away from the Teh Internets for a couple of days. Hope your weekend was equally relaxing and friend-filled. Even if they were not wearing sexy cocktail dresses and feeding desserts to your spouse.
Sheesh. Some guys have ALL the luck….
While it might be enjoyable to feed desserts to the SO, a guy like me would never fit in such a dress, sexy though it may be.
She single? :-D
I’ve spent so much time working in restaurants, figuring out how each management team wants it’s creme brulee burned, that I can’t eat it anymore. It nauseates me. I did, however, thoroughly enjoy getting to wield a blowtorch at work.
But did the hotel offer human bedwarmers?
You don’t drink at all? Is there an interesting story you feel like sharing behind that?
Weekend Update but no mention of Frank Stallone or how much Germans love David Hasselhoff? For shame. For shame.
Jake:
“Is there an interesting story you feel like sharing behind that?”
Nope. I don’t drink because I never got started, and if I started now, I’d just get fatter. Also, Krissy married me with the understanding I would be her lifetime designated driver.
Now that’s true love.
That picture makes me feel funny. In kind of a good way.
Great picture! I don’t think it has the same effect on me, though…
Aw man, I missed an opportunity to see you wife again.
And to all those who think that not drinking in the bar is difficult, that hotel bar is not the easiest to get service in. So it’s not all that hard to not drink there, even for those of us who do imbibe.
“And to all those who think that not drinking in the bar is difficult, that hotel bar is not the easiest to get service in. ”
What I saw — the two people trying to work the bar were doing their flat-out-best, but there needed to be four or five. It was annoying, but the fault was the management for improper staffing.
To be evenhanded, though — while the economy sucks overall, the economy has take hotels out back, beaten them up, stole their car, set fire to their house, and sold their mother into slavery. Hotels in Detroit? All of that, squared.
Hotels are currently universally short staffed, because there are two kinds of hotels right now, moderately understaffed and closed.* If publishing is in dire straits right now (and it is) the hotel industry has run dire aground and is sinking into the dire mire.
However, I remember the last hotel that convention was in. (shudders) I’m hoping some of the issues can be sorted, but this is a pretty good hotel for the con.
And, JS, you did not spend all of your time in the bar. You spent at least 30% of it in the lobby — some 15, maybe 20 *feet* from the bar.
It’s a pretty comfy lobby, though….
* The last hotels that Windycon and Capricon (both in Chicagoland) were in closed this month. We’re going to remember that in hotel negotiations. “You know what happened to the last hotel who didn’t give us a good deal? (makes teepee with hands, stares over rim of glasses.)
I can see why you like to hang out in the bar.
I’ve spent many an entire weekend in the bar too. To…er…various degrees of “success”.
:: wide-eyed :: Hubba hubba! :)
Erik V. Olson, I should say that the service in the bar last year was a distinct improvement over the previous years I’ve been there. I wasn’t able to attend this year, so I don’t know the actual conditions there this time around.
My impression of their service comes from three years ago when I stood at the actual bar service area, with two people working the bar and light attendance in the bar area, and still had to shout to get their attention (the $10 bill in my hand didn’t seem to be working). The only reason I went up to the bar was because after waiting an hour at one of the tables talking with people I hadn’t seen anyone servicing them. If they had been servicing customers, I would have waited and been patient.
The hotel, overall, has excellent service, though. The front desk and room maintenance are very customer oriented.
I’d like to state to those assembled (and especially my fiancee, should she be reading) that the enthusiastic expression of appreciation by David H. for the subjects of the above photograph do not necessarily reflect the opinions of myself.
I have enough reasons to be in the dog house, thank you very much. (grin)
And this was more important than spending the weekend on the Internet with us? Priorities, Scalzi.
Okay, several hours after first reading this post I still cannot wrap my head around the notion of sharing creme brulee. I mean, the evidence is right there in front of my eyes, but it refuses to make sense. You’re telling me someone had a dish of creme brulee, and was presumably enjoying it — I see her smiling — and then, what?, voluntarily gave some to someone else?
Gah. My whole grasp of The Way Things Are is rattled. Where does this end? Next thing you know people will be sharing flan. ::shudder::
Jeff Hentosz:
Actually, it was my dish of creme brulee, and I shared it with both of them. Because, well, you know. Look what I got out of it.
A better cost to benefit ratio I can’t imagine.
I’m beginning to suspect our host is a corporate fabrication, the face of a brand like Betty Crocker, a composite entity with all the things we envy: a successful writing career, a gorgeous spouse and friends, godlike photographic skills, a house in the country, and cats. He’s kind of like Martha Stewart without that inconvenient “gone to prison” thing.
Now if John starts selling something that for $19.99 promises that we, too, can live the marvelous life of a writer, say a book on how to write successfully, then we’ll know he’s, um…
The prosecution rests, your honor.
Nice picture, though I have a feeling that I don’t quite appreciate it fully, as Catherine said at 11.
Glad you had a good time…but John, if you title a post “Weekend Update,” shouldn’t it close with “good night, and have a pleasant tomorrow”? Or have you forgotten that basic element of style? :-)
I could watch that all weekend long. No problem.
I feel compelled to brag on John’s wife and Yanni a bit more: Krissy, stunning in black, Yanni, luscious in red. Seriously, a double dose of feminine beauty that had every man and woman in the place looking with wide eyes. John and B., you’re two lucky dawgs!
That’s HAWT, I don’t care who you are.
Also, the gloves totally MAKE IT.
(And great photo, too: technically, I mean.)
The men (including me) noticed the beautiful woman. The woman I was with noticed the gloves. Or at least that’s all she mentioned.
I still wish I’d managed to come up with something semi-clever like “If I said you have a beautiful body, would you hold it against me in a court of law?”
Yes, the effect this photo has on me is, “Creme brulee! Yum!” and “Nice gloves, where’d you get them?”
The trio of beautiful women in cocktail dresses stunned me into an inability to remember who they were; I think I even forgot Yanni’s name while she was introducing the others to me.
Since I’d never met her before, the mental image I have for Krissy is her in the cocktail dress.
Go Geeks with Hot Wives!